At 93 years old, the pipe that burst in Westwood on Tuesday was younger and in better condition than many of Los Angeles’s brittle, corroding water arteries.

More than 1 million feet of the city’s pipes are beyond a century old — past their intended life spans — and this segment was not a high-priority replacement, according to reports reviewed and interviews conducted on Wednesday.

While the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has tried to ramp up water main replacements, it hasn’t met its goals. City officials and observers say the problem is money. Aging infrastructure is the largest problem here and at water utilities around the U.S., but unaware consumers are usually reluctant to pay.

“People don’t usually notice a water main until the main breaks in the middle of their street,” said Greg Kail from the American Water Works Association. “But the fact remains many of those buried pipes are in need of replacement.”

DWP officials are swapping out more than 18 miles of aging pipe a year, while their goal, according to a 2012 report, was to replace more than 34 miles each year. They requested $162 million to speed up the pace in 2012. Amid political turmoil and new leadership at the DWP, Mayor Eric Garcetti called off any rate increases.

Even with the funding, the average replacement cycle would be 300 years.

At that pace, “It will all fall apart by the time we get along to replace it,” said DWP Ratepayer Advocate Fred Pickel, the official agency watchdog. The line that ruptured, Pickel said, was not yet prioritized for replacement.

The DWP first focused on rebuilding trunk lines — the largest of the water pipelines — in 1996, and developed a priority system. The most risky ones were made of riveted steel, like the one that broke Tuesday, the study found.

“The likelihood of significant breaks, costs associated with making repairs, payments for damage to public and private property, and exposing the public to a safety hazard are increasing over time,” the 1996 report warned.

Department spokeswoman Kimberly Hughes could not say when the Westwood trunk line was last inspected.

The agency focused on the problem again in 2009, when a dramatic series of water-main bursts flooded streets throughout the city, especially in the San Fernando Valley. One, in Valley Village, created a sinkhole so large it partly swallowed a firetruck.

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Fixing aging power equipment has also been a priority, but the DWP hasn’t spent all of its power infrastructure budget, due to labor issues and other constraints. Water expenditures and rates are calculated separately, and officials have been using their full water replacement allotment, Pickel said.

In fiscal year 2014, the department budgeted $194 million for water infrastructure capital replacement.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city dealing with aging pipes. Much of the nation’s pipes were installed at the turn of the last century, in the 1920s or after World War II, said Kail from the water association.

“As a country, we have not faced this challenge before, where all of these hundreds of thousands of miles of pipes are in need of replacement at the same time,” he said.

How much of a rate hike Los Angeles residents would support is a key question, observers say, especially as water rates are climbing due to supply constraints. Between January 2012 and March 2014, water rates here have increased by more than 45 percent, Pickle said.

City Councilman Paul Koretz estimated it would cost $4 billion to speed up replacements to a 100-year cycle.

“I think it would bankrupt all of our ratepayers,” said Koretz, who introduced a motion Wednesday that would investigate alternative funding sources.

Congress passed the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act in June, Kail said, to give utilities another way to finance this type of work.

But the closure of Sunset Boulevard and flooding of UCLA may sway some people to support a rate case, some observers say. Tony Wilkinson, the chair of the DWP Oversight Committee, hopes people will realize the need, similar to advocates for green energy and water conservation.

“I’m hoping we can build a constituency for infrastructure,” Wilkinson said, “so the public can support and pressure the department to keep the system safe.”

Staff Writer Jason Henry contributed to this report.

About the Author

Mike Reicher is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles News Group with a focus on government accountability. Reach the author at mike.reicher@langnews.com
or follow Mike on Twitter: @mreicher.